


Come In With the Rain

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: College boys do stupid things for love sometimes, M/M, Rain is wet, Stanford Era, Winchesters should take Intro to Communication together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2223696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So, uh, yeah, I got the idea for this while standing out in the rain with a Taylor Swift song stuck in my head.  I hope y'all enjoy it anyway!</p></blockquote>





	Come In With the Rain

Sam stared out the window at the streetlamp, knowing that he really should close it. Quite aside from the pouring rain outside, he knew what else was out there in the dark. He’d known since he was eight years old, listening to his brother talk in rapt tones about every monster that was actually real and how their dad hunted them. It still scared him, and he regrets all too often how he read Dad’s journal and basically forced Dean into telling him. Dean had been protecting him.

If Dean were here now, Sam knew that he’d be kicking Sam’s ass for leaving the window open. Sure, the salt he’d poured into a groove would keep out spirits and demons, and the silver mesh that overlaid the entire sill would keep out a whole host of other evil things. But sometimes, the thing that wants to hurt you is just plain human. Sam sighed, reaching to the window. The chances of him getting what he hoped for were almost nothing. He pushed the window open the rest of the way and walked away to get some sleep.

 

Across the street, Dean was on the creepiest stakeout he’d ever been on. Stakeouts were part of hunting, but then they were watching for creatures and trying to ignore the humans. When he realized how close he was to Palo Alto after his last hunt, though, he told himself he could do what Dad did. He could just swing through, swing by the apartment, hope for a glimpse of Sam through the window as he drove by.

What he’d seen, though, made his heart stop cold. Despite the downpour, Sam was standing at the window, wearing nothing but pajama pants. With the light from the room behind him glowing through his hair, Dean had almost thought he looked like an angel. Not that angels were real, of course, but close enough. He pulled the Impala to the curb on the far side of the street so that he could keep staring, shutting her down when he realized that Sam could probably hear the rumble of the engine.

When Sam reached for the window, Dean thought that was it, it was time to move on. But then, his fool of a brother had opened the window further and just walked away, and from the light going off, he intended to leave it that way all night. He trusted Sam to have some basic protection, but there were still a lot of creepy-ass things that could get in. Not to mention the rain. Dean cursed under his breath as he got out of the car and went to the back. He quickly armed himself and went to the building, climbing the wall outside and hauling himself through the window.

 

The plan was to find a chair or something, sit facing the window until sunrise, and leave. That plan ended after three steps, as he found himself blocking a punch aimed at his face. He realized he didn’t know if Sammy had roommates, so he held back, blocking and dodging his assailant until he was reasonably confident it was his brother. Then he went full offensive, not bothering to pull his punches. It ended with Dean sweeping Sam’s legs out from under him, pinning him to the ground. “Whoa… easy, tiger!” he teased.

“Dean? You scared the crap out of me!” Sam’s voice sounded slightly panicked indeed.

“You kinda deserve to have the crap scared out of you,” Dean taunted, and then Sam was kicking his head and flipping him over. “Nice moves, Sammy. Now get off me.” He gave Sam a little shove, not hard.

Sam got to his feet and pulled Dean up, the two of them breathing hard from their fight. They were barely a foot apart, and Dean could feel that his heart wasn’t gonna stop racing for a while. Luckily, breathing was a lot easier to get under control. “What the hell are you doing here?” Sam asked.

“Uh, well, I was thinking I’d look for a beer,” Dean joked. How exactly do you explain to your brother that you were stalking him?

Sam wasn’t having it. “What the hell are you doing here?” he repeated, this time with a current of menace in his voice.

“Okay, all right,” Dean said. “I caught a case in San Carlos, and when I finished it and was looking at the map, I realized how goddamn close I was to you. Thought I’d swing by, make sure you were safe. But no, you have to go leaving the window open all night! Anything could come through there.”

“Not anything, Dean. Give me some credit,” Sam huffed.

Dean went to the window. “Okay, the salt line looks good, and I love the silver mesh idea. May steal that for my baby. What’s the plan from stopping a serial killer? What’s the plan for stopping some sick freak preying on college boys with no roommates?” He saw Sam wince on the freak and regretted it. “Some sick pervert, sorry. And don’t say ‘second floor’, because as I proved, someone who’s motivated and reasonable athletic can get in.”

“Hunter’s instincts and getting to one of the hundreds of knives or guns in this apartment,” Sam deadpanned. “Seriously, there are only a few, but I sleep with a gun under my pillow. That .45 you gave me for my sixteenth birthday.” He reached back, pulling it out of his pants to show Dean. “I didn’t pull it earlier because my instinct was I wouldn’t need it.”

Dean stared at the gun. “No wonder I couldn’t find that when Dad and I were divvying up weapons,” he said. Sam gave him a funny look. “Naw, it ain’t like that. Dad decided a few months back that I was hell to be around when I wasn’t devoting most of my attention to you and sent me off in the Impala with half the weapons. We still hunt together, but we’ll split up and do our own thing sometimes too. He’s not here, I think he’s in North Dakota.”

“So, you saw the open window, and decided to what, test me? See if I was suicidal or just an idiot?” Dean noticed for the first time that they were standing close enough to the window to be hit by the rain coming in. And Sammy still didn’t have a shirt on.

“I was gonna come play security guard for the night,” Dean admitted. “Why the fuck is it open in the first place?”

Sam sighed. “Because… I’m taking this folklore class,” he said. “Don’t give me that look, I have to take an elective in culture and I figured the folklore class would be the most genuinely blowoff class from the list.”

Dean’s smile grew huge. “Straight-A Sammy chose a course based on his ability to blow it off?”

“I’m taking twenty hours, Dean,” Sam protested. “The general rule is three hours outside class for every hour in, so that’s an eighty-hour week. But if I did this, then I’m done with the general requirements crap and can start focusing on my history and law classes.” Dean had no idea what to say to that. He hadn’t known there were even requirements in college. “Anyway. So I read this legend, some medieval thing. If you leave a window open during a rainstorm, and observe certain other rituals, the thing you miss most will come in with the rain.”

Dean snorted. “That sounds like so much bull.”

“Tell me about it,” Sam agreed. “I’ve tried it five or six times, and it only worked once.”

“Huh. What came in with the rain for you?” Dean asked. “Because a 15% success rate on something fiddly like that isn’t too bad. I don’t guess… you think it might work with a car window?”

“I don’t know, cars weren’t exactly around in medieval times, Dean,” Sam said prissily. “I do know that you leaving the window open for rain to come into your baby, whatever it is you’re missing would have to be something really goddamn special to you.”

“Yeah, and you know I don’t really have any shit I’d consider special enough for it,” Dean said thoughtfully. “’Cept one, of course.”

“Dean, you can’t leave the Impala’s windows open when the Impala’s what’s missing,” Sam said, like he was explaining to a four-year-old.

“Huh? No, not my baby,” Dean said. “I’m not stupid, Sammy. Anyway, you never did say what came in for you.”

Was that… was Sam blushing? “You know I never had any thing I ever really cared about, the way you care about your baby or that ring you use to open your beers… that’s probably why it took so long to work. You’re not exactly going to come in with the rain if you’re hunting a rugaru in Alabama or something.”

Dean glanced at the ring. “This thing? Sure, it’s nice and a handy bottle opener, but if it gets lost on a hunt… I don’t care. It’s the amulet that would break me if I ever lost it. See, my kid brother gave it to me the night I had to shatter his world. It’s kind of a symbolic thing, a promise I made that night that I’d always be there to help pick up the pieces.” He’s suddenly aware that he is entirely too close to Sammy. “I guess I should take it off and give it back, I broke that promise when I let him walk away from me and didn’t even try to at least keep something open between us.”

He reached for the amulet, but Sam’s hands got there first, pressing the cord into his neck. “I know your phone number, Dean. If I didn’t have entirely too much of the Winchester pride, I could have called. I wasn’t even pissed at you. I knew I was ripping your heart out, and I did it anyway. If anything, you should be taking it off and throwing it away because I broke my promise not to leave you alone.” Sam smiled, but there was a sardonic touch Dean didn’t much like. “Neither of us were ever meant to do this alone. I don’t know how you coped after you and Dad split up. I take way too many hours per semester and spend so much time overthinking papers that the library workers have threatened to set up a bedroom in the history section for me.”

Dean shook his head. That sounded like Sammy, all right. “I chose hunts that kept pulling me farther and farther west, until I ended up in San Carlos,” he admitted. “Nearly fucked up more times than I can count. I can do this alone, Sammy, but I don’t want to.”

Sam inched closer, close enough for him to lean his forehead down to rest against Dean’s head. Dean’s breath caught. “Bobby had an idea, actually,” Sam suggested. “If you and Dad are doing things separately anyway, I don’t see why it couldn’t work.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Dean asked warily.

“Stay with me,” Sam said. “I do my college boy thing during the week while you look for hunts in the area, I join you when I can. Long breaks like Christmas or especially summer, we hit the road and go where we wanna go. Bobby says that central California is actually a pretty good hotspot, that there used to be a hunter who just worked the area. Died last year, tulpa got him.”

“Yeah?” Dean turned the idea over in his mind. “Sam, you’re not hunting if you gotta spend eighty hours a week studying.”

Sam grinned. “My advisor is begging me to take a lighter courseload next semester. I can drop to twelve or fifteen hours easily – forty-eight to sixty hours, with studying. And I can bring the books with me on car rides, you know. Like high school… you drive, I do my homework, my history paper ends up influenced by Metallica lyrics.”

“What about your friends here? What do you tell them?” Dean asked, though he was starting to hope this could work.

“As little as possible. Tell ‘em that my brother’s moving to Palo Alto for work, I’m tagging along when I can, and that if they want to stay my friend then they better get on your good side.” Sam stopped, seeming to realize just how close they were standing in the window. “Okay, either I’m horribly underdressed for this, or you have way too many clothes on.”

“Nah, I get cold and you’re a natural furnace, we’re good.” Dean stripped off his coat anyway, looking for somewhere to drop it where it wouldn’t drip on too much. “So what do I do between hunts? Cali’s not that much of a hotspot.”

Sam laughed and took Dean’s coat, throwing it to hang over a couch. Dripping onto the couch, but Sam didn’t seem to care. “Well, you can go to Nevada, or work at a garage, there’s a community college you could take classes at, or this is a college town Dean, there are plenty of bars where you can do your thing. What’s more, a lot of kids here are trust fund babies, so they have money to be separated from.”

Dean’s eyebrows had inched up slowly as Sam talked. He pulled a flask of holy water. “Did I just hear Sam Winchester suggest that I might, for example, hustle pool in his town when he’s gonna be telling people I’m related to him?”

Sam took the holy water and poured a good splash over his head. “I’m trusting you not to get too stupid or greedy with it, but yeah, better that than having you leave again.” He shook out his now-wet hair and handed Dean back his flask. “What? I cut it, okay? You and Dad were always after me to cut it… thought I’d try it. I hate it and I’m growing it back out.”

“Yeah… I will never give you crap again about your hair,” Dean said. “Unless you go full-on Cher or something.” He looked around the apartment. “When you say stay with you, you mean here in Palo Alto, or here?”

Sam looked at the floor, blushing a bit. “Here. In this apartment.” His head came up, mask settled over his face. “The guy I’d been sharing with freaked out when he found me cleaning my gun and bolted. So I have an empty bedroom, and no sense putting protective wards on two places when we can share a place…”

Dean relaxed a little. “Yeah. I think… I’m willing to try this, see how it goes. Biggest challenge is gonna be Dad.”

Sam nodded. “He calls you during school, go back him up. During vacations… well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Let’s go get your stuff, huh? Park baby in the garage where she belongs, keep her safe and dry.”

“One more thing, Sammy,” Dean said. “Things were getting a little…”

Sam took a couple steps back from Dean. “Tense? Awkward? Unbrotherly? Incestuous?”

Dean sighed. “Figured that would be your response. Just wanted to know where you stood.” He turned to head out, only to feel himself tackled to the ground.

“You son of a bitch,” Sam said, rolling Dean over and sitting on his chest. “I didn’t make it clear enough, leaving my window open for you? You think the complete lack of personal space tonight was, what, me trying to make you uncomfortable as I asked you to stay with me? Fine, then. I don’t think even you can mistake this one. I love you, Dean, and as awesome a brother as you are to me I’m not sure I want to introduce you to my friends as my brother. In the hunter’s world, they’d understand what it’s like, but at Stanford… they don’t know how off-the-rails some lives can get. And I don’t want questions about why my brother’s bed looks like it hasn’t been slept in for a week when you’ve been in town the whole time. But the thought of denying my brother… I can’t. Screw Dad, that’s the biggest problem I’m going to have. I’m probably going to lose friends over this, but you know what? Screw them too.”

Well then. “Huh. Guess that clears things up.” He reached up, pulling Sam’s head down to his. “Love you, little brother,” he said as he kissed Sam. “Your call. I can be Dean Smith, John Winchester’s godson, if that’s what you wanna do.”

Sam laughed. They’d used that ruse at schools a couple times. “Nope, you’re my big brother. And if they can’t deal with it, then too damn bad for them.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, yeah, I got the idea for this while standing out in the rain with a Taylor Swift song stuck in my head. I hope y'all enjoy it anyway!


End file.
